State Must Stop Pussyfooting Around Health Care Vigilantes

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General:

The State must send an unequivocal message to the xenophobes blocking access by foreign nationals to health care facilities in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal that people engaging in vigilantism will be arrested and prosecuted.

South Africans have every right to demand that the State uses the country’s immigration laws to control the inflow of foreign nationals, and every right to demand a government that radically improves the delivery of services and dignity to desperately struggling citizens. But they have no right to take the law into their own hands.

It is noteworthy that one of the organisations involved in the campaign to stop foreign nationals from receiving medical treatment is a political party that is a member of the Government of National Unity and has therefore sworn to uphold the Constitution.

The Constitution guarantees the right to health care for all people in the land. Xenophobic organisations and political parties which don’t like that Constitutional provision have the option of using the courts and/or parliament to seek to change it.

South Africa has experienced sporadic outbreaks of xenophobic violence since 1994, peaking in 2008 when nearly 62 foreign nationals were murdered in an orgy of violence, looting and vandalism.

Since then, stoked by politicians and organised xenophobes, violence and threats of violence have been a constantly bubbling presence. Though largely centred in Gauteng, incidents have occurred throughout South Africa – including in the Western Cape, where 3000 Zimbabwean farmworkers in De Doorns were displaced in 2009.

Very few perpetrators have ever been arrested or charged. This probably reflects the State’s difficulty in defending its open border policy to a nation in which the daily lived reality of tens of millions of citizens is dire poverty and chronic under-development.

It’s a recipe for recurring disaster. Only the State has the power to change the ingredients.

There are no laws against populist identity politics, but there are laws against hate speech, forced business closures, unlawful evictions, and inciting violence.

There are also laws to prevent laws from being selectively applied or subjected to the whims of politicians.

A group of civil society applicants are presently awaiting the Gauteng High Court’s decision on their application to halt Operation Dudula’s allegedly unlawful actions and compel government to implement its National Action Plan against xenophobia.

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